January is always that time of year when everyone looks forward to that fresh start and a clean slate. We have hopes, aspirations, and dreams for a better year than the last. The year always begins with some enthusiastic ideas and hopefully some good planning.

Well, how many of you have ever made a goal to eat healthier or lose weight? Have you hit your goal?

This past year I wanted my children to eat less pre-packaged food items, I wanted to finally lose those last few pounds from my pregnancy, I wanted to stick to a food budget, and I wanted to have more freezer meals to make my life easier as a homeschooling momma. The 31 Days to a Better Grocery Budget series helped tremendously, as well as the post on How I plan my freezer Cooking Day?

The best part about this recipe is that it is not made in a big casserole dish! It makes 18 individualized baked oatmeal portion so that I won’t eat more than my one portion. Its also very inexpensive.

A Few More Tips:

I buy the basic ingredients at Aldi and the rest at Target or Whole Foods.

You can find many varieties of chocolate chips without refined sugar at Whole Foods and online.

I use grain-sweetened chocolate chips, but carob chips are also delicious as well.

Using different fruits does not change the nutrition info all that much.

Using chocolate chips does change the nutrition info and you will see that difference noted above.

This recipe freezes wonderfully in Ziploc freezer bags.

If you only start with one goal this year, make it freezer cooking and start with this easy dish!

Brenda Bennett, is a homeschooling mom of three and author of Sugar-Free Mom.com. She lost 50 pounds and has kept it off for the last 8 years! At Sugar-Free Mom, you will find great recipes for yourself and your family, as well as health-related issues about exercise and refined sugar-free alternatives.

This sounds great. It is exactly the kind of recipe that I have been interested in. My family loves baked oatmeal but it would take a while to finish the whole casserole dish. This works perfect! Thanks for sharing!

I like that this recipe is also gluten-free (if you use gluten free oats!) Thanks. ps: I’m also wondering on the re-heating thing…do you pop these into a bowl with milk or eat like a muffin. Also, can you make these in the tins without the paper liners…I’m cheap and don’t like to use those if I can help it! 🙂

I had all the ingredients on hand and just made these – with chocolate chips, of course. I also added an extra 1/2 a banana for some reason. I didn’t have any stevia so I used 1/2 cup white sugar & 1/2 cup brown. Instead of 1 T of vanilla I used 2 teaspoons vanilla & 1 teaspoon almond extract. They are DELICIOUS. My husband just asked for seconds. These are definitely muffins though. I guess if you added enough milk you could make it into an oatmeal of sorts, but it is just as good as a muffin. Very moist. I would probably pop them in the microwave for 20 seconds or something after being frozen. Make them! They are great!

There are different kinds of oats. Well I guess I should say processed differently. The old fashioned are “more intact” I guess you could say so they take longer whereas the quick cooking oats are processed more so they don’t take as long to cook. Quaker sells both, so look at the container, although, I’ve usually used either or and just had to make sure it didn’t overcook. I might not be a good idea though on the first try. 🙂
p.s. I’m not the person that posted this but I figured since there wasn’t an answer, I’d chime in, hope that’s ok. 🙂

Old fashioned oats are not as ground up as quick oats. They’re both sold in canisters and can be generic or Quaker or whatever, it doesn’t matter, but the quick oats cook in about 1 minute and the old fashioned take about 3 minutes.

If your grocery store has a bulk food section, you can find most types of oats for a LOT less money buying bulk (and quality is excellent – often a name brand like Bob’s Red Mill used in the bulk barrel).

As previously explained above, oats come in a variety of types: quick quicking is the most refined and thus cooks up the fastest, old fashinoned falls in the middle and is less refined, more of the oat hull still on the grain (more fiber and better for you), but takes a little longer to cook and has more texture. Steel cut oats are even less refined. They are suitable for cooking overnight in a crockpot if you wanted to try a real easy was to cook them. I remember seeing a recipe or link here on Chrystal’s website for crockpot oatmeal that is very good. You could do a search on her site if you are interested. You can’t use the more refined oats in the crockpot – they don’t hold up to the long slow cooking very well.

It’s the easiest recipe in the world (easier than the one you have above with less ingredients) and it freezes great! I cut the 9×13 into 8 portions and wrap individually. She has several other versions (including chocolate). It might be worth checking out.

Thanks also for your site – you are encouraging me to be more purposeful in how I manage my family’s money.

Wanted to thank you so much for your blog! I am a newbie and I am learning so much and loving it! I was wondering too if you could substitute anything else for the banana. We have a latex allergy in our household and bananas have their own natural form of latex.

I just made them this morning, delicious! We didn’t have applesauce so I substituted 1/2 cup of olive oil and 1/2 cup of vegetable oil. I was worried about the olive oil changing the taste, but next time I’d probably just do a full cup. I might also try pumpkin, that sounds amazing! These are going to be a wonderful thing to have on hand, thank you so much!

Thanks so much for this! It looks fantastic. I am going to maybe try pumpkin in place of the applesauce after trying it as is first. I appreciate budget and healthy recipes that can be frozen. Great grab-and-go breakfast!

What an awesome idea! I love baked oatmeal and usually cut the recipe in half making only an 8×8 pan, but even still that takes a few mornings to go through. I was actually wondering recently about using muffin tins, but hadn’t tried it. Glad to hear it’s possible and that they freeze well. I will probably play around with the ingrediants (this is my odd idea of fun!) But what a great base to start with. Thanks so much for posting!

I made these tonight and they’re delicious! I didn’t have flax seed, so just left it out. I also used a combination of brown sugar and turbinado sugar instead of sugar subs. I divided the recipe up into 3 so I could have different varieties: chocolate chip walnut, cranberry walnut and raisin walnut. I got 19 out of the batch and they were FULL! Thanks so much for posting this. I feel so much better when I eat oatmeal daily, and having these handy will help. 🙂

I made these for my kids and they loved them! We just eat them warm, like a muffin. SO easy to pop in the microwave for a quick breakfast before a VERY early bus stop time! I put in dark chocolate chips (because dark chocolate is healthier, right?!) and craisins.

Okay, I added more oatmeal to the batter until it was less runny and it came out well. I used chocolate chips this time to entice my daughter to try them but next time, I’m going to do some with fruit.

Helen – I made these today and also had a very runny batter. But it seemed to bake up okay except that the muffins are stuck like glue to the paper liners. We ate them shortly after they were done and had a tough time scraping the mixture off the liners into our bowl. I was hoping that maybe when they cooled, they would come out the liners easier. Not so- gosh – now it is impossible to get them out. I am hoping that when they are warmed up in the microwave, they can be scraped off again …..

I wonder what I did wrong – I followed this exact recipe with no subs.

I would recommend spraying the liners with non stick cooking spray. Yes they do stick, it is inevitable really. The batter is runny because these are not meant to have the same airy , lightness of muffins and they are supposed to be very moist. I have tried the recipe adding more batter and less milk and we prefer it as the recipe is listed. They were dry and dense with different amounts then shown here.

After freezing them and popping them in the microwave, we discovered that the wrapper came off much easier. So a win-win. Thanks for sharing and I will be making another batch soon as the boys cleaned these up – they would each eat two out of the microwave with some milk on top!

HOLE-LEE-COW!!! These are wonderful. I used dried cherries and dark chocolate chips and some with just fresh blueberries. I must say, the cherry ones are my favorite. I had quick oats on-hand so I used those. The Stevia I had was in powdered form so I used about 1/2 cup and 1/2 cup of brown sugar. Oh, and I used milled flax seed instead of ground – not sure what the difference is. I didn’t think the batter was too runny but I too had a problem with the liners sticking to the muffins. Next time I am going to add walnuts with the dark chocolate & cherries. Ohhh baby!